Over the past decade, the popularity of events has exploded with an increasing number of festivals, exhibitions, conferences and other pop up events every year. Events build on the booming customer demand for “experiences” over “things”, particularly with the younger generations, and event marketing is an incredibly effective way of promoting an existing business, or even as a business in their own right.
There are a wide variety of approaches to event marketing, and the approach should be tailored to the specific event itself. For example, marketing a physical, in-person event like a festival, will be very different from an online event like a webinar or Facebook Live stream. That being said, there are a number of commonalities that can help inform your strategy.
Event Marketing in Three Stages
Whether you are actually marketing an event yourself – or looking to benefit from the hype around an event – there are several steps that you can follow to ensure maximum exposure:
- Build-up – In the run-up to the event you can share information to help promote it, via social media or via content on your blog. This helps to promote the event, build anticipation and gives potential attendees all the information they might require.
- Throughout – During an event you can continue to share updates, and interact with attendees who share content on social media. Posting regular photos, videos and other content will help people to feel part of the event even if they couldn’t be there physically.
- Post-event comms – After the event, there is still lots you can do to prolong the enjoyment and get the most impact from a marketing perspective. Sharing a highlights reel video, or a wrap-up summary on your blog are both popular ideas. This also has the benefit of increasing awareness for people who might be interested in attending the event next year.
Using this three-pronged model gives you longevity and an event that maybe only lasts a day can give you weeks or months’ worth of content to share with your audience.
As we come into festival season, this type of approach is very common and will be used to promote many of the most popular and hotly anticipated events of the year.
Event Marketing as Part of Your Broader Strategy
At AsOne we’ve consulted our clients on the most effective digital marketing strategies for over a decade. We partner with our clients over the long-term to find sustainable solutions to help their businesses grow. As part of this, we recognise the value of events to engage your customers face-to-face and have helped many of our clients to leverage event marketing.
If you’re interested in hearing more about event marketing and how AsOne can help promote your event, don’t hesitate to get in touch and speak to our expert team. For businesses and organisations based in the North East, you may be eligible for a 40% discount off your first order if you qualify for the NEBSF scheme, so please ask!
